Journal of a Sabbatical

April 7, 2000

kestrelvision

Plum Island Hawk Watch

Today's Bird Sightings:
495
2 red-tailed hawks
Bridge Rd.
1 kestrel

Today's Reading: Early Spring in Massachusetts: from the Journals of Henry David Thoreau edited by H. G. O. Blake

Today's Starting Pitcher:
Pete Shourek

More Thoreau secret decoder ring entries:

Rana halecina = Rana pipiens = northern leopard frog

I'm pretty sure old Henry was talking about the leopard frog. I guess the classification of frogs has splits and lumps over time just like the classification of birds. In Thoreau's day Rana halecina was a separate species, one of three (?) that are now considered races of Rana pipiens.

Populus tremuloides = poplar a.k.a. quaking aspen

chaffer

v. 1. haggle
2. British: exchange small talk

The other day I saw 4 wild turkeys walking in procession parallel to the runway at the Plum Island airport. When I mentioned them to Nancy, she asked if Thoreau had reported any wild turkeys in his journal. Nope. Wild turkeys had already been extirpated from Massachusetts by Thoreau's time. They've only come back recently. Yet another change in the landscape. The turkeys are back because the forests are back.

Turkeys are getting to be a recurring theme: there was the long essay in Pliny Steele Boyd's Up and Down the Merrimac on why the founding fathers chose the bald eagle over the wild turkey as the national bird (Nancy says Benjamin Franklin favored the turkey -- I wonder which one Washington favored? or Jefferson?), and the famous (at least at MRFRS) incident of Roberta being attacked by a flock of turkeys ...

Today's big outing was to see Kestrel's Eye, a Swedish film about a pair of kestrels that live in a church steeple, at the Newburyport Screening Room. I spotted a kestrel over the marsh on Bridge Rd. on my way across the bridge. That seemed appropriate.

This beautiful movie follows the lives of a kestrel pair and gives you a kestrel's eye view of the sights and sounds around the church steeple where they nest. There's no background music and no dialogue or narration, just plain life. Natural sounds, mechanical sounds, human sounds... as if you were perched up there observing it all yourself. It really pulls you in.

It's not just about the kestrels though. As the scenes progress you notice parallels in human lives going on around the church: funerals, weddings, a parade, gardening, people walking dogs... what is it with raking the gravel into interesting patterns in this churchyard? The chicks preening each other look remarkably like the kids straightening each other's confirmation robes as a procession goes into the church, or the best man straightening the groom's tie before a wedding.

In a wonderful scene, the third chick is hatching while the mother is feeding the two older chicks. The mother notices this and pulls it out of the shell, yanking it around by its little stubby naked wing. It's wild and tender and funny all at the same time.

The antics of the hatchlings in the nest and as they learn to fly got laughs from the audience. The biggest laugh was for a scene of two of the chicks perched at the entrance to the nest as a parade goes by outside the church. They start moving their heads up and down to the rhythm of the marching band!

It was pleasant night to walk along State Street after the movie looking at everything from a kestrel's point of view.